Evolution of bath time

Babies don’t sweat or compile the foul body odor of their parents, but they still need to get a bath eventually. But when they’re only a few weeks old, it isn’t really wise to just chuck them into a full sized tub and hope for the best results. For the first few months, you need to try different ways of bathing your baby. We’ve already experienced several stages of bath time.

In the hospital, a nurse “trained” us how to bathe Everett. From the demonstration, it seemed like bathing was quickly wiping a wet cloth all over the baby while he screams his dissatisfaction to the entire floor. It didn’t really seem like the epitome of bath time fun.

For the first few weeks, we weren’t very consistent at giving Everett baths. We did make sure to wash his face daily and make sure he was cleaned after a diaper change, but since he didn’t really emit any funny smell, we sort of forgot about the full body bath. When we did remember, we just did quick wiping of the wet cloth over the entire body and Everett seemed to love it about as much as he did in the hospital. He also wasn’t the biggest fan of washing his face or cleaning after changing his diaper, so it may have just been a strong hatred towards wet cloths.

Everett has this funny habit of growing, and so when February rolled in, we decided Everett was big enough to put into a tub. Though, when I say tub, I mean the bathroom sink. It may sound odd that we bathed our son in a sink, but it also fit our one month old son perfectly. Everett also started realizing baths were quite the awesome experience. Of course, there was always the faucet sticking out and threatening to make bath time less fun in the form of head butting Everett. I’m glad to say this was an experience Everett missed out on. The task of balancing a baby in the sink (and keep his head away from the threatening faucet) is more challenging when his butt is all soaped up and slippery.

Everett’s favourite part of bathing was being able to look into the mirror and watch his little “friend” who was also happening to have a bath. Everett shared a few laughs and smiles with this friend. Everett seemed to take a real liking to bath time, and even started accepting the cloth that was thoroughly wiped around his face. February also kicked off the start of bath time becoming a solid weekly ritual. Then by March, Emily decided Everett’s head had a habit of smelling a little less pleasant than stale milk and so it became a twice weekly tradition. It has continued to be a time where Everett will talk and laugh, and generally he seems to be having a wondrous time. In March, Everett graduated from the sink, and was awarded a collapsible bath tub which is several times larger and has the added bonus of no object sticking out to bash Everett’s head. The larger space also means we’ve now been able to include toys during bath time. This means that the parents have something to distract themselves with, while Everett slides his soapy butt all over the tub.

I’m glad that bath time seems to be an enjoyable experience for Everett. Right now, it is a two-person job because Everett can’t sit up without assistance. I sometimes look forward to the day Everett can sit up by himself thus not need two of us around, but I also realize that bath time is a great time to bond with him. Besides, there needs to be one parent that will always spray and splash Everett during the bath time, right?